The payment of debts is necessary for social order. The non-payment is quite equally necessary for social order. For centuries humanity has oscillated, serenely unaware, between these two contradictory necessities.

I would suggest that barbarism be considered as a permanent and universal human characteristic which becomes more or less pronounced according to the play of circumstances.

Distance is the soul of beauty.

More than in any other performing arts the lack of respect for acting seems to spring from the fact that every layman considers himself a valid critic.

In this world, only those people who have fallen to the lowest degree of humiliation, far below beggary, who are not just without any social consideration but are regarded by all as being deprived of that foremost human dignity, reason itself - only those people, in fact, are capable of telling the truth. All the others lie.

The sea is not less beautiful in our eyes because we know that sometimes ships are wrecked by it.

Attachment is a manufacturer of illusion and whoever wants reality ought to be detached.